Code Review

Code Review

Four review modes, each a different moment and posture. Pick by when the review happens and who's giving vs receiving it.

When to use

• pre-merge (default) — before merging a PR/change: two-axis review, Standards (repo conventions + smell baseline) and Spec (faithful to the originating issue/spec)
• in-flight — during implementation, before a decision stands: adversarial cross-examination biased to disprove, not approve
• evidence-gate — before claiming a task done/fixed/passing: produce fresh verification evidence, not assertion
• receiving — when review feedback arrives: verify the feedback is correct before acting on it; technical rigor over performative agreement
• Triggers on "review this", "code review", "before merge", "代码审查", "合并前审查", "帮我看看这代码", "能合并吗", "are you sure", "verify before done", "收到评审意见"

Not for: deep security review (use security-review); machine-detectable lint/style (use linting); runtime behavior bugs (use debugging).

Steps

1. Pick the mode

• Merging a PR / evaluating a diff → pre-merge (Step 2)
• Mid-implementation, a non-trivial decision is about to stand → in-flight (load [references/review-modes.md](references/review-modes.md) §in-flight)
• About to claim "done" / "fixed" / "passing" → evidence-gate (load [references/review-modes.md](references/review-modes.md) §evidence-gate)
• Review feedback just arrived and you're deciding whether to act on it → receiving (load [references/review-modes.md](references/review-modes.md) §receiving)

2. Pre-merge review (default mode)

2a. Pin the fixed point + gather sources

Capture the diff once: git diff ...HEAD (three-dot, against the merge-base). Confirm the ref resolves (git rev-parse ) and the diff is non-empty before going further.

Identify, in order:

• Spec source — issue refs in commit messages (#123, Closes #45), a user-supplied path, or a spec under docs//specs/. If none found, ask; if there isn't one, the Spec axis reports "no spec available".
• Standards sources — anything documenting how code should be written (CODING_STANDARDS.md, CONTRIBUTING.md, lint configs). On top of repo docs, the Standards axis always carries the smell baseline below.

2b. Standards axis (sub-agent)

Spawn a sub-agent with the full diff, the standards sources, and the smell baseline pasted in full (it has no other access). Ask it to report, per file/hunk:

• Documented-standard breaches — cite the standard (file + rule). Hard violations.
• Smell baseline — name the smell and quote the hunk. Always judgement calls; a documented repo standard overrides the baseline.
• Quality axes — correctness (edge cases, error paths, off-by-one, races, state inconsistency), security (input validation, secrets, injection, auth — defer to security-review for depth), performance (N+1, unbounded loops, missing pagination, sync ops that should be async). Skip anything tooling enforces.
• Test quality — do tests exist for the change, test behavior not implementation, cover edge cases, descriptive names, would catch a regression?

Smell baseline (Fowler, Refactoring ch.3) — what it is → how to fix:

• Mysterious Name → rename; if no honest name comes, the design's murky.
• Duplicated Code → extract the shared shape.
• Feature Envy → move the method onto the data it envies.
• Data Clumps → bundle the traveling fields into a type.
• Primitive Obsession → give the domain concept a type.
• Repeated Switches → polymorphism or shared map.
• Shotgun Surgery → gather scattered edits into one module.
• Divergent Change → split the module edited for unrelated reasons.
• Speculative Generality → delete the unused abstraction.
• Message Chains → hide a.b().c().d() behind one method.
• Middle Man → cut the pure delegator.
• Refused Bequest → drop inheritance, use composition.

When you flag a structural problem, propose the move — not just the problem. Named remedies: replace a conditional chain with a typed model/dispatcher; collapse duplicate branches; separate orchestration from business logic; move feature-specific logic out of shared modules; reuse the canonical helper; make a type boundary explicit; delete a pass-through wrapper; extract a helper or split a large file. Prefer the remedy that removes moving pieces.

2c. Spec axis (sub-agent)

Spawn a sub-agent with the diff and the spec contents. Ask it to report:

• Missing/partial requirements — spec asked, diff didn't deliver.
• Scope creep — behaviour in the diff the spec didn't ask for.
• Wrong-looking implementation — requirement looks met but implementation is off.

Quote the spec line for each finding. Under 400 words. If no spec, skip this axis and note it.

2d. Synthesize findings

Present both reports under ## Standards and ## Spec headings. Do not merge or rerank across axes — a change can pass one and fail the other; keeping them separate stops one from masking the other.

Approval standard. Approve when the change definitely improves overall code health, even if imperfect. Don't block because it isn't exactly how you'd write it. Don't accept "I'll clean it up later" — deferred cleanup rarely happens; require it before merge or a filed bug with self-assignment.

Label every finding's severity: Critical (blocks merge — security, data loss, broken functionality), (no prefix) Required, Optional/Consider, Nit. Lead with what matters: correctness and security first, then structural regressions and missed simplifications, then nits. A few high-conviction comments beat a long list.

Change sizing. ~100 lines good; ~300 acceptable for one logical change; ~1000 split it. Watch file size — a small diff can push a file past ~1000 total lines, a signal to extract first. Separate refactoring from feature work (§9, engineering-principles.md).

End with a one-line summary: total findings per axis and the worst issue within each.

3. In-flight / evidence-gate / receiving modes

These three modes run at different moments than pre-merge and have distinct postures. Load [references/review-modes.md](references/review-modes.md) for the full workflow of each:

• in-flight — adversarial cross-examination of a non-trivial decision before it stands, while

course-correction is cheap. Biased to disprove, not approve. Not a substitute for pre-merge review.

• evidence-gate — before claiming done/fixed/passing: identify the proving command, run it, read

the full output, confirm. No completion claim without fresh evidence.

• receiving — when review feedback arrives: before implementing suggestions, verify the feedback

is technically correct. Reject performative agreement and blind implementation; push back on unclear or questionable feedback with evidence.

Output: docs/TODO.md — pre-merge findings consolidated as a project-level todo list, grouped by business area, with code↔TODO.md bidirectional sync. (In-flight/evidence-gate/receiving produce behavior, not a doc.)

Verify

• pre-merge: findings checked adversarially (for each Required/Critical, re-read the hunk and confirm the problem is real — drop any that don't survive scrutiny); two axes reported separately; severity labels clear; docs/TODO.md on disk with code↔TODO.md sync.
• in-flight: the decision was cross-examined before standing, not after; the disprove-bias was applied.
• evidence-gate: the proving command was actually run and its output read — not asserted; the claim matches the evidence.
• receiving: each piece of feedback was verified before action; feedback rejected with evidence where wrong; no blind implementation.

References

• [${CLAUDEPLUGINROOT}/references/engineering-principles.md](${CLAUDEPLUGINROOT}/references/engineering-principles.md) — discipline every skill shares (verify don't assume, push back when warranted, §9 behavior-preserving change).
• [${CLAUDEPLUGINROOT}/references/clean-code.md](${CLAUDEPLUGINROOT}/references/clean-code.md) — naming, functions, smells.
• [${CLAUDEPLUGINROOT}/references/mermaid-diagrams.md](${CLAUDEPLUGINROOT}/references/mermaid-diagrams.md) — diagram structure when reviewing architecture.
• [references/review-modes.md](references/review-modes.md) — the three non-default modes in full: in-flight adversarial doubt, evidence-gate verification, receiving review feedback.
• [references/tech-debt-register.md](references/tech-debt-register.md) — upgrade TODO.md to a prioritized register: interest/principal/risk/effort, paydown cadence, accepted-debt decisions.

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: int2t05
• Source: int2t05/engineering-skills
• License: MIT

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.